Barry K has, through his Puppy Printer Wizard, put printer support in Puppy for a number of Canon, Epson, HP and Lexmark printers. This is good news for those having one of the supported printers. Unfortunately, my Brother HL-1030 parallel port printer is not one of them. To make matters worse, in order to share it in my home network, I had it connected to my D-Link DI-713P Wireless Gateway's printer port. This required a special driver from D-Link to get to work in XP.

When rarsa announced his breakthrough CUPS solution for Puppy some time ago, I used his scripts and the files that were downloaded to get the Brother printer to work in Puppy 1.07. It was easier to set up in Puppy than it was in XP - no special driver was neccessary! I must confess that I did have to search the net for the right 'Device' and 'Device URI' syntax for this unusual configuration. It turned out to be 'Device': 'LPD/LPR Host or Printer' and 'Device URI': lpd://192.168.0.1/lp' for my network. I've been printing happily ever since. The ability to print from Puppy was the one thing that had kept me from running Puppy as my main OS instead of Kanotix.

* The CUPS installation script

I have been following the CUPS threads on the Puppy forum and the great work dewdrop has been doing helping others. However, I found rarsa's instructions awkward, having to execute separate scripts to install the CUPS files. They also needed updating for Puppy 2.xx. So I decided to re-write the scripts into a single script, update the CUPS files from Slackware 10.1 to 10.2 and add the CUPS 'gimp-print' file containing numerous additional printer drivers.

The script will now ask for the type of printer to be installed (parallel, USB or network) and install the correct modules for either Puppy 1.xx or 2.xx (the module names have changed between kernel versions).

Please note that in Puppy 2.00/2.01/2.02, the perl installation is missing some perl modules needed to run CUPS. The missing files are in perl_missing.tar.gz, attached to this post. See the instructions further down on how to install this file.

* Instructions for using the script

Installing the CUPS files (Note - you need to be online so the script can download the necessary files)

1. Download the attached file (cups-install.tar.gz) and copy it to /root/

Then, in a console, do the following:

2. Change to your root directory

# cd /root

3. Unpack the file:

# tar -xzf cups-install.tar.gz

4. Change to the installation directory

# cd cups-install

5. Run the script. This will download and install the four CUPS files. If the files have been previously downloaded, the script will use the these files instead of downloading them again. Just make sure they are in the same directory as the CUPS install script.

# sh cups-install.sh

Adding and configuring your printer

1. After the CUPS files are installed, the script will automatically start up your default browser with the CUPS web interface where you add and configure your printer. The terminal with this script will remain open with instructions to help you add and configure your printer. Once configured, a test page can be printed to check the setup. No re-booting of the PC is neccessary.

If you should want to read the instructions again, they are in the file 'cups-conf.txt'. Open the file with an editor to read it.

Note that you may not need to download a .ppd file for your printer before running this script. It may already be listed on the 'Make' and 'Model' pages of the CUPS web interface. If it is not listed, download a suitable .ppd file from www.linuxprinting.org , copy it to the same directory as this script and then run the script again. It will automatically install the .ppd file. The 'Make' and 'Model' should now be present when you try to add the printer in the CUPS web interface.

Tip: If you have an HP printer, you can check which 'Model' name to use in the CUPS web interface by looking up the 'Printer Class' for your printer on HP's 'All Supported Devices' page: http://hplip.sourceforge.net/supported_devices/combined.html
Example: HP PSC1410 'All in one' printer - use 'DJ3320'

2. Finish by deleting the temporary directory (if you don't want to save the downloaded files).

# cd ..
# rm -R cups-install

* Adding the missing perl modules for Puppy 2.00/2.01/2.02

1. Download the attached file (perl-add-missing.tar.gz) and copy it to /root/

Then, in a console, do the following:

2. Change to your root directory

# cd /root

3. Unpack the file. This will create temporary directory perl-add-missing

# tar -xzf perl-add-missing.tar.gz

4. Change to directory perl-add-missing

# cd perl-add-missing

5. Run the script.

# sh perl-add-missing.sh

6. Finish by deleting the temporary directory

# cd ..
# rm -R perl-add-missing

* Feedback

Please report in this thread if you are successful or if you have problems installing a printer using the script and these instructions.

I've had way to many people at home this summer and feel like a turist guide. Not that I'm complaining.

I know how important it is to have testers. I wouldn't have been able to refine the installation the first time around if it wasn't for dewdrop and other people testing and giving advice._________________http://rarsa.blogspot.com Covering my eclectic thoughts
http://www.kwlug.org/blog/48 Covering my Linux How-to

Hi, Paul
I did a fresh Puppy 2.02, hdd #1 install and tried the new cups installer. This is with a usb HP3740 printer. I used xarchive to untar, instead of xterm, but the same smell. Install your perl package and than run sh cups-install.sh in terminal, used "Xterm here" from right click menu in cups-install window. Installed the printer in the print manager and all went well. You have a nice spacings on the entries in rc.local. No having to "modprobe usblp" or reboot! Printed test page. A+ score on this Cups installer. Very good upgrade. I only made one mistake, I forgot to hookup to the internet first (rushed it).
Thanks, Kal

Thanks for your efforts,
Unfortunately it's not quite there for me yet as I get some errors.
The link to www.linuxprinting.org is malformed as there is a comma immediately after .org and before the final /
I did spot this but it is not easy to see.
That is a minor problem because I am getting the same errors as I had before when running cups-install.sh
they are :

Whew...well, now I know how I am going to spend this weekend. I will be trying it on my two Canon printers. One is an i70 portable, the other an MP780 multifunction (scanner+printer), both through the USB port. One thing I cannot do in Win 98SE is make either printer work through a PCMCIA USB 2.0 adapter. Good heavens, if that works then I am going to have to learn the Swedish national anthem...

Hi, Buterman
Just wondering if you have tried going to the slackware site and downloading from another server manually.
http://slackware.it/en/pb/package.php?q=10.2/cups-1.1.23-i486-1#download

Good Luck, Kal

I did download the files for slack 10.1 at the suggestion of another forum member and edited cups-install.sh but I cannt seem to get anything to print to my remote printer. running the printer wizard gives no option for remote printer uuse either.
Norm

Was I supposed to manually create /root/cups-install or was
tar -xzf cups-install.tar.gz supposed to do that?

Thanks! doc

When changing to a directory I find it useful to use the ls command to check exactly where I am. Also if you click on the tar.gz file in Rox, Puppys pupzip will open and you can select all files and extract ( it saves remembering all the right xzf etc options).

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